Animeniacs: Japanese cartoon lovers to converge on coast
Running a fan convention with a thousand guests is tougher than it looks.
“We planned for the number of attendees we had (the previous) year,” Marc Yu, the founder of South Walton’s Anime South convention, told The Log, “but we underestimated the logistical infrastructure needed to handle all the people at the events.”
The 2007 Anime South, which begins Friday, is the third annual South Walton convention devoted to Japanese cartoons, known as anime. Yu, the owner of Crestview’s Anime Florida store, said that last year’s convention drew 1,024 people and he expects 1,500 this year.
To cope, he said, there will be more staff and volunteers this year, along with more signs to direct people around the convention and holographic colorcoded badges for identification.
An anime fan since childhood, Yu said he founded an anime convention in 1998 in Virginia before moving down to the Emerald Coast a few years ago after his parents retired here.
After talking to other fans at an out-of-state convention he decided to try it locally.
Like its predecessors, Anime South III will feature viewing rooms for anime movies and TV shows, a costume contest, sale rooms for anime DVDs and merchandising, speeddating sessions, and guests such as the American voice actors Richard Epcar, Ellyn Stern and Spike Spencer.
Yu said the guests are the top draw, and the guest-information page on Anime South’s Web site is the most visited.
“The American voice actors behind the Japanese animation seem to be a big hit at the con and are celebrities in their own right,” Yu said. “Running a very close second is cosplay (costume play), where members come dressed as their favorite anime or manga character.”
The Saturday night costume contest, Yu said, is the most-attended event at Anime South.
The first two conventions were scheduled in November, but to find sufficient affordable space for a larger attendance, Yu said, they had to look at a time when there were fewer large events planned and lower room rates.
Yu said past attendees have told him holding Anime South so late in the year might keep the membership down, but pre-registration isn’t any lower.
He said that’s probably because it falls inside the Christmas school holidays but far enough after Christmas that most families have wrapped up their other obligations.